The green-bordered text below is is the English version of the explanatory text,
from the page facing the map. Another page on this site gives the
full text in German, English, French, and Bulgarian.

29. – The Ethnological Map by Kantschoff (1900).

This map of Macedonia is a Bulgarian one. Its author is Vassil Kantschoff who for a long time was Inspector of the Bulgarian Schools in Macedonia and crossed, in this capacity, the country in all directions. It can be said without exaggeration that there is not a single spot in Macedonia that he has not visited and investigated. He was particularly suited for such studies because he possessed thoroughly the whole ethnological literature of the Balkan peninsula, and because he was an incredibly objective man, even in national and political questions. Moreover, all Bulgarian teachers in Macedonia were for this purpose at Kantschoff's disposal, and they knew their districts as they did their own pockets.

It is to be deplored that want of space enforced the diminution of this facsimile map to at least one half, so that it will be difficult to decipher it without a magnifying glass. But the readers are already so familiar with the ethnological map of the peninsula that they will be able to read this ethnological map of Macedonia, even if it is considerably smaller.

We regret sincerely that we cannot adjoin to this map that one composed by the contemporary Servian geologist professor Zwiitch who is the ideologist of the chauvinistic panserbism and also the inventor of the "Macedonian-Slavs". But as this Servian scientist has uttered in the space of only 5 months, out of purely political reasons, two different opinions about the ethnology of Macedonia, it may be assumed that his ethnological map has no scientific value whatever. It is known that in the English magazine "Review of Reviews" of October 1912 Professor Zwiitch admitted as Servian ethnological sphere in Macedonia only the northern boroughs of the Uescub district (the towns Uescub, Kumanovo and Tetowo) with a small part of north-west Macedonia (the towns Debr and Struga), whereas in March 1913 he published an ethnological map in the German journal "Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen" in which nearly one half of Macedonia had the blue Servian colour; the rest of the Bulgarians (excepting the inhabitants of the east-frontier) he proclaimed as "Macedonian Slavs".

Keywords: Macedonia – Kantschoff

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